Todd Maxson, MD, FACS

Dr. Todd Maxson is the Chief of the Trauma Program at Arkansas Children’s Hospital and a Professor of Surgery at UAMS. He also serves the State of Arkansas as the consultant on trauma for the Department of Health.

Dr. Maxson grew up with an academic family: his father serving as a college president and his mother, originally a nurse, changing careers and completing a doctorate in education and working as a professor at the college level.

He graduated from high school in Victoria, Texas, completed a biochemistry degree from Texas A&M University in 1986 and medical school at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston in 1990. He took a general surgical residency at the University of Arkansas from 1990 – 1996. Following training in Arkansas, he moved to Texas to complete pediatric surgical training at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. He was on faculty in Houston before moving to the University of Texas –Southwestern in Dallas to begin the trauma program at Children’s Medical Center of Dallas. This program became the first level I pediatric trauma program in the southwest United States to be verified by the American College of Surgeons. He and members of his team from Dallas then moved to Austin, Texas to build the trauma service at the new Dell Children’s Medical Center, taking this facility to Level I status as well. He served for five years on the Governor’s Advisory Committee for the Texas trauma system and also worked for the American College of Surgeons Committee on Trauma. He now serves the ACS as the pediatric trauma representative on two committees and serves on numerous other national trauma committees.

He is the author of over 35 peer-reviewed publications and has been funded for his research work in the area of brain injury in children and injury prevention. He lectures extensively both nationally and internationally on pediatric trauma and injury control.